Red Betty | The Drift E28

Welding cable is great for extending battery wires. It comes in any gauge you could want for your battery and is shockingly flexible/easy to use. 

What do we think of this stuff?

https://weldingsupply.com/cgi-bin/einstein.pl?PNUM::1:UNDEF000000:OR:304-1170R

Quality Insulated Welding Cable (Weld Leads/Lead Wire). Soft-drawn 30-gauge copper strands for superior flexibility. Properties: 600v, -40 deg C. to +90 deg C., heavy duty/all purpose. 

Sounds like pure copper to me right?

Should have a nice lug crimper coming in today. Going to replace all the terminal lugs with 100% copper ones, not copper plated ones. Hopefully that helps. If not I might just bump it up to the 0 gauge that I have since I ordered some terminal lugs for that size too. Should have some time towards the end of the week to work on it. 

Looks like it should work! 

Full copper lugs are so much better than the coated ones. 

Professor_Brap said:

Full copper lugs are so much better than the coated ones. 

Hopefully that is my weak point. There are 7 of them between the battery and starter at the moment. I think whenever I pull the wires out to re-do the lugs I'll try and get a resistance reading with the multimeter, before and after.

Put the all copper lugs on the 4 gauge wire last night, but it still wasn't enough. Just to verify the battery I moved it up front temporarily and sent power straight from it to the fusebox and starter and it worked fine. Ok, time to break out the 0 gauge. I started replacing one section at a time with 0 gauge wire and it's working now. Looks like I only need the 0 gauge on the positive side of things, 4 gauge seems to be enough for negative. 

Note: This is still CCA wire as that's what I have and it was cheap. I am guessing if it was pure copper wire, the 4 gauge would have been enough, but I'd probably go 2 gauge pure copper to be safe next time. 

To do these lugs too I borrowed a proper lug crimper from my buddy, and it sure is nice! $55 on Amazon (Well, looks like the price went up, but my buddy got it for $55.).

So now it's got enough juice to start the car with the batteryy in the trunk and cut-off switches in place. Yay! 

Next question is the best way to wire the alternator. Will draw up a diagram quick and make another post.

Run the charge wirs straight to the battery post at the back. Thats so the kill switches kill the car. At any point afterwards, the car will keep running. 

Alternator Wiring:

Trying to figure out the proper way to wire in the alternator so that the cut-off switches work properly. I am pretty sure that option 2 is the way to go, but that will leave the contacts on the starter and the alternator always hot, even when the cutoff switches are turned off. 

Current Wiring:

Option 1: Alternator goes straight to battery. 

Option 2: Alternator AND Starter go straight to battery. 

So I went ahead with option 2 for the Starter/Alternator wiring. I figured since to wire the alternator in such a way that the cut off switches work properly, the power lug on it is always going to be hot (with the battery connected of course), so having the starter post also hot all the time probably isn't much worse, and then makes that an even more direct run for power.

Then I got the battery mounted. Little bit of angle iron to keep it from sliding, then a top strap and bolts from AutoZone to keep it held down. Not super pretty, but it's solid. Now that that is a fairly permanent mount I can take some of the slack out of the battery cables. I had left them long to start since I didn't know where exactly I wanted the battery.

Then I made up some brackets for the seat belt mounts. Again, not the prettiest, but they'll be solid. Need to grab some bolts to mount the belts tonight. I'll also make up the passenger side mount and get everything put together there. I don't have the passenger seat yet due to shipping issues, but I should be able to get the seat brackets ready enough that I can just drop the passenger seat right in when it gets here. 

When I was at AutoZone I picked up adapters for the coolant temp and oil pressure sensors for my new gauges. Good news is, the general adapter kit had both of the adapters I needed, and the temp sensor is installed. Bad new is, I snapped off the adapter for the oil pressure sensor in the block... So off to pick up and extractor set and new adaptor tonight...

So here's the To-Do list as of now. I'm probably forgetting some stuff though. 

-Passenger Seat Bracket

-Seat Belts

-Oil Pressure Sensor

-Gauges

-Hood Hinge/Pins/Mount

-Oil Level Sensor Leak

-Oil Change

-Coolant Bleed

-Alternator trigger wiring

-Fix Idle

-Fix Misfire

-Wire in O2 Sensor? Maybe. There's debate online about whether it is necessary to have or not for this car on a stock ECU. Some say it runs better but idles worse without it. I'm also not sure exactly how it should be wired with the ECU and the heater circuit, so maybe I'll just put in my AEM wideband and send the 5v to the ECU. 

Final stuff:

-Check Brakes

-Check Suspension

-Adjust E-brake

-Gather drifty tires/wheels.

Still a decent list, but it's coming together. Less than a month till Carlisle!

Nice work.  Cool project.

I've always thought this was one of the better looking beemers ever built.

Ognib said:

Nice work.  Cool project.

I've always thought this was one of the better looking beemers ever built.

Thanks! I fell in love with the E28s after getting one for my first car for $100. Good times. 

This thing should be fun for sure! Slowly, but surely, it's coming together. 

Can't wait to see it in a few weeks at the drift competition at Carlisle!

In reply to dherr :

I can't wait to drive it! Especially in an environment where I don't have to avoid cops or bothering neighbors... ;)

Interested to see how you deal with the broken oil pressure part, as dad broke his in the block of the vette today....

Try hammering in a torx bit. 

Just be careful not to drive it in so far it shears off any chips.

In reply to Crackers :

Dude!!!!! Genius!!!!

I'm pretty sure I've had to do it once before on a 350. 

But that's why I don't throw away my rounded off torx bits. 

Dusterbd13-michael said:

Interested to see how you deal with the broken oil pressure part, as dad broke his in the block of the vette today....

It was just the brass adapter to fit the hole in the block to the pressure sender. Hardly took any amount of tightening to snap it. And easy-out extractor took it right out with my fingers, I just didn’t have one handy last night. 

Torx bit is a great idea!

I run starter cable through kill switch so I don’t have to fiddle around (wherever battery is) unhooking cables to service the starter or work near its terminal.  

Got a few more things done Friday night and Saturday, don't have pictures of everything at the moment though.

Passenger seat bracket is made, and the seat belt brackets are welded to both. They are also both painted now, but I don't have a picture of that. 

Test fitting the passenger seat brackets had the kill switch closer than I anticipated. 

So I flipped the switch handle around and I think that will work fine.

I also figured out mounting for my Tach, Water Temp, and Oil Pressure gauges. Still have to wire them up though. 

Helped a friend do some moving on Saturday which took a little longer than I figured, but I'm happy to help a friend. Ended up bringing this home as a result, which then distracted me for a little longer doing some demolition. Little bit of work and I should have a decent little utility trailer for whatever. 

AWSX1686 said:

Helped a friend do some moving on Saturday which took a little longer than I figured, but I'm happy to help a friend. Ended up bringing this home as a result, which then distracted me for a little longer doing some demolition. Little bit of work and I should have a decent little utility trailer for whatever. 

I saw the first picture and though, "Cool, can't wait to see the teardrop refurb thread"  Yea! :-)

Then I saw the next picture and was like.... :-(

Judging by the pile behind the trailer, it didn't look like it took much convincing for it to separate from the trailer.

In reply to klipless :

I had a similar reaction, I love a good teardrop! 

Yeah, I had to have a handful of rachet straps on it to keep it together for the drive home. And avoided highways so I could keep the speed down. It would need a completely new teardrop to be a usable camper again. It was falling apart.